Durga Mani Gautam

Professor of Horticulture
Agriculture and Forestry University, Rampur, Chitwan,

Corresponding author's e-mail: durgagautam2013@gmail.com

Abstract

Efforts have been made by the government and other organizations for commercial production of horticultural crop in Nepal. Production of fruits and vegetables has been increased to some extent but the production is not enough to meet the domestic market demand. Despite of great potentiality, farmers are reluctant to establish larger farms as marketing is the problem. There is great potentiality to produce different kinds of fruits and off-season vegetables in hills and mountains. Nepal can become shelf-sufficient in vegetables and can export fruits and off-season vegetables to neighboring countries. For effective marketing fruits and vegetables should be pre-cooled, sorted, graded and properly packed. Packhouse is necessary to perform all this operations. Packhouse is also an assembling point for small and scattered productions. Packhouse can be small (manually operated) to large (mechanically operated). For fruits, large packhouse are needed. Cold storage is necessary to assemble large quantities, to lower down and maintain low temperature, hold temporarily for bulk marketing and storage. Shelf-life of fruits and vegetables can be prolonged and loss can be minimized at lower temperature. Pre-cooled commodities can be effectively transported in refrigerated vehicle to long distance market. Various packing house operations and a model marketing approach are described in this paper. Until and unless commercial production is linked with market it will not get success. A holistic approach with packhouse and cold-chain facility is the utmost need of nation.

Keywords: Sorting, Grading, Packaging, Curing, Cold chain, Marketing.